The semiconductor device industry has a market-driven need to reduce the size of devices used in products such as processor chips, mobile telephones, and memory devices such as dynamic random access memories (DRAMs). Currently, the semiconductor industry relies on the ability to reduce or scale the dimensions of its basic devices. This includes scaling a dielectric layer in devices such as capacitors and silicon-based metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs), which have primarily been fabricated using silicon dioxide. Thermally-grown SiO2 provides an electrically and thermodynamically stable material, where the interface of the SiO2 layer with underlying silicon provides a high quality interface as well as desirable electrical isolation properties. However, increased scaling in microelectronic devices has made the use of SiO2 less useful because of its band gap behavior and the resulting possibility of shorting.